ALEX BRUMMER: Could this weekend be a Lehman moment for Greece?

As we discovered during the 2007-08 financial crisis, the most important decisions, bad and good, almost always come at weekends when financial markets are closed and the bankers on their yachts.

Lehman was placed into bankruptcy on a Sunday. Northern Rock was nationalised, very reluctantly, by Gordon Brown on a Sunday.

The recapitalisation of Britain’s banks was accomplished on a Sunday and decisions by the German and Irish government to insure all bank deposits were also made on the Sabbath day.

Crucial weekend: Greek PM Alexis Tsipras

If there were to be a Lehman moment for Greece, it potentially could be this weekend, although it is worth remembering that the deadline for the International Monetary Fund debt repayment of €1.5billion, a paltry sum in the context of Greek’s total debts of €317billion, does not actually occur until June 30.

Moreover, despite unbending language from IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, it is still not absolutely clear that the deadline is as fixed as claimed. Precedent suggests a default does not actually occur until the IMF’s executive board (still dominated by the developed countries) says it has.

There is clearly an all-out effort, after weeks of prevarication, to get something done by, or on, Monday.

The sense of a denouement increased in the past few days with a speeding up of the capital outflows and the withdrawal of a further €3billion of deposits from the Greek banking system.

The major surprise is that there is anything left in the coffers after months on end of capital flight.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, has proved to be the Athens sugar daddy. The ECB already has made available €81billion to Greek banks, under the emergency lending facility (the equivalent of the lender of the last resort loans), ignoring the low quality of Greek bank assets. One estimate is that 40 per cent of loans made by the private sector banks are rotten.

The determination of the ECB to keep the banking system operating for as long as possible in the face of capital flight is exemplified by the latest decision to roll over the existing facility and to expand it.

In practical terms, the ECB has been doing more for Greece than the US Federal Reserve ever does for American states and cities, from California to Detroit, that in recent past have gone bankrupt and defaulted on debts.

The Frankfurt-based bank’s latest benevolent action suggests hopes at the ECB that prime minister Alexis Tsipras and his showbiz finance minister Yanis Varoufakis will finally behave like adults. It is a curiosity that in the middle of the most serious financial crisis in Greek history, Varoufakis felt it was wise to accept an invitation to appear on the BBC’s Question Time next week.

Cash lines: The ECB, headed by Mario Draghi, has already made available €81billion to Greek banks, under the emergency lending facility

The markets looked to be comforting themselves that with a eurozone summit scheduled for Monday, followed by a meeting of finance ministers, that the fix is in and a peace will be declared.

Certainly, the sides are not that far apart on what needs to be done on keeping the public finances under control. It is the detail around VAT rates and pensions that divide the parties.

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There is, however, a far more pessimistic scenario if a deal cannot be done and Monday’s meetings become the Lehman moment.

If Greece were allowed to default and the Greek banks closed then it would be necessary for the ECB and the other major central banks, including the Bank of England, to flood the global financial system with cash to make sure the pipes of capitalism do not clog up.

Greece, of itself, may only be 0.2 per cent of eurozone GDP and British bank and corporate exposures may be down to negligible levels. But if you pull one brick away, the whole castle could come tumbling down.

It is easy to forget how flimsy the global financial system still could be. Quantitative easing has blown up asset bubbles around the world. Just look at the valuation of tech newcomer Fitbit on its first day of trading in New York when it soared by 48 per cent.

The balance sheets of central banks have ballooned.

The size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet stands at $4trillion, against $1trillion before the crisis. The Bank of England holds £375billion of UK government stock on its books, almost 25 per cent of the national debt that has now motored up to £1.5trillion.

Some European banks, such as Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, are being held together by paper and string.

Geopolitics are as uncertain as they have been since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, with a full-scale war going on in eastern Ukraine. The Middle East, in an arc from Syria to Libya, is in flames.

Confidence, in such circumstances, is tissue thin.

Containing the aftershocks of a Greek default would be all but impossible.